Rural America as we know it is changing.  Fewer individual farmers are farming today than in the past, there is more industry and larger cities, and the infrastructure between cities has increased.  All of this changes not only the daily lives of the people living in the Midwest, but also the land, plant life and animals who inhabit the area.

Within the past 20 years, we have become increasingly aware of the widespread impact that human activity, even positive human activity, has on our environment.  Unfortunately, this impact may be unintended and permanent in some regards.  “We have lost 95 percent of our native tallgrass prairie,”  said David Bue, Director of Development for Pheasants Forever.  “Only 2 percent of our population is involved in farming today, compared to 40 percent in 1900.  Development and commercial interests continue to eat away at our rural land – and the nation’s premier grassland conservation program, CRP, is threatened due to high crop prices and low CRP payment rates.  The result: millions of CRP acres are being plowed up.  For all the good work we’ve done, if we hope to maintain any semblance of rural America as we know it today, we have to meet the challenges of the coming decades.”

A primary goal of the Diamond Conservation Fund is to minimize the unintended harmful effects of human impact on the environment by supporting those who take active steps to create and conserve a healthy habitat for all native forms of life. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways.  It can be accomplished by the individual farmer who changes his farming techniques to maintain natural wildlife along areas of his property or acts to maintain clean water access.  It can be the group of land or homeowners who plant native shrubs, flowers or plants in their gardens or free spaces, or a group that chooses a community project which is beneficial to the environment on land that was formerly used for industrial purposes.  The list of possibilities is long.

Rural America as we know it is changing.  Fewer individual farmers are farming today than in the past, there is more industry and larger cities, and the infrastructure between cities has increased.  All of this changes not only the daily lives of the people living in the Midwest, but also the land, plant life and animals who inhabit the area.

Within the past 20 years, we have become increasingly aware of the widespread impact that human activity, even positive human activity, has on our environment.  Unfortunately, this impact may be unintended and permanent in some regards.  “We have lost 95 percent of our native tallgrass prairie,”  said David Bue, Director of Development for Pheasants Forever.  “Only 2 percent of our population is involved in farming today, compared to 40 percent in 1900.  Development and commercial interests continue to eat away at our rural land – and the nation’s premier grassland conservation program, CRP, is threatened due to high crop prices and low CRP payment rates.  The result: millions of CRP acres are being plowed up.  For all the good work we’ve done, if we hope to maintain any semblance of rural America as we know it today, we have to meet the challenges of the coming decades.”

A primary goal of the Diamond Conservation Fund is to minimize the unintended harmful effects of human impact on the environment by supporting those who take active steps to create and conserve a healthy habitat for all native forms of life. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways.  It can be accomplished by the individual farmer who changes his farming techniques to maintain natural wildlife along areas of his property or acts to maintain clean water access.  It can be the group of land or homeowners who plant native shrubs, flowers or plants in their gardens or free spaces, or a group that chooses a community project which is beneficial to the environment on land that was formerly used for industrial purposes.  The list of possibilities is long.